That was the city Health Department’s response yesterday to a bill that would make it illegal to tie up a pet outdoors for more than three hours.

City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens), an unabashed animal lover and a sponsor of the proposed law, said cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have already enacted even stricter regulations that ban tethering entirely.

“I don’t expect the police to go around with stopwatches,” he said during a hearing on the measure. “I expect it to be complaint driven.”

But Deputy Health Commissioner Dan Kass said the city would be hard pressed to enforce such a measure under any circumstances since inspectors would have to witness the three-hour violation in order to give out $250 summonses.